“Fiery Attitude” to Blame for Soccer Tennis Injury?

By: Michael | June 15th, 2007

You know the news has been slow in the bye week out of Kansas City when MLSNet runs an article about the Wizards’ “Fiery Attitude“. While it’s a stretch to take an on-the-field passion/disagreement and use it to characterize the entire team, there is no denying that a key difference between this year’s Wizards and those of the past two seasons is a palpable hunger (and expectation) to win. Gone are the lackluster draws or the games where an early goal was followed by a desperate struggle to prevent an equalizer for 70 minutes instead of going for the 2-0 lead. Onalfo’s ability to fundamentally change the attitude of the team has been paramount to our success this year.

That said, is there a poor consequence to such fire during practices? During one of the highly-touted soccer tennis tournaments the Wizards hold, it seems as though the champions Sasha Victorine, and Kevin Hartman, went a bit far:

“To be honest, the only match in which we gave up a lot of points was in the semi-final to Kerry (Zavagnin) and Davy (Arnaud),” Hartman said. “However, I would like to report a soccer injury. Sasha ran into the net and came up with a limp. Meanwhile, I headed the ball much more than usual, and sustained a bruised forehead. My bye weekend was spent icing my forehead and visiting our trainer Chet North every day. It was worth the victory, but the consequences of winning were not easy to deal with.”

While most Wizards fans by now have caught on that Kevin is prone to bouts of humorous hyperbole, a look at this week’s injury report shows Sasha is questionable with a strained MCL. Oops…

Eddie at the Gold Cup Update:
Our lone Gold Cup participant, Eddie Johnson, scored versus Trinidad and Tobago to end his international scoring drought, but came off with a “mild knee strain” that was classified as a “sprained knee” whilst EJo watched the US beat El Salvador from the bench.